Next batch of Christmas cards

I seem to be having a fad on CD ROMs, which believe me is a real surprise to me. I brought 'Walk in Wonderland' from My Craft Studio a good while back, made a few cards from it but wasn't overly impressed at the printing results. Well now we have a different printer that lets you print to a very high dots per inch and along with that I have been using different types of papers to print on e.g. vellum, pearlescent, acetate and I've come to appreciate the results much more. With that in mind I've brought a couple of other discs, 'Ivory Cats' and 'Victorian Fairies & Angels' both from Joanna Sheen and 'A little bit of folk' from My Craft Studios, all courtesy of ebay ;-)

With Christmas not far off I've stepped up the card making pace and here are the results:

A shaped edge card made using the 'Ivory Cats' CD ROM from Joanna Sheen

A decoupage card made using the 'Ivory Cats' CD ROM from Joanna Sheen

A stepper card made using the 'Ivory Cats' CD ROM from Joanna Sheen

An invertage card made using the 'Enchanted' CD ROM from Card Creations Plus

Still got lots more to make and the pressure is on, why do I always leave things to the last minute?!!

Sarah x

Latest cards

Although I've been away from blogger for a while I have been hard at it making a batch of cards commissioned by a friend. She wanted open cards that could be used for all occasions not just birthdays so I tried to use sentiments that were general and could be used for anything.

Made using the 'Walk in Wonderland' CD ROM from My Craft Studio

Made using the 'Enchanted' CD ROM from Card Creations Plus

Made using the 'Enchanted' CD ROM from Card Creations Plus

Made using 'Elusive Images' stamps, Versamark ink and Distress inks

Made using a Sarah Kay stamp, Nestabilities dies and K & Co papers

Made using a Sarah Kay stamp, Nestabilities dies and K & Co papers

Besides these cards for my friend I've made myself a couple along the way

Made for a male friends 50th birthday using the 'Walk in Wonderland' CD ROM 

from My Craft Studio

A birthday card made using the 'Enchanted' CD ROM from Card Creations Plus

A sympathy card for a friend made using 'Victorian Fairies & Angels' CD ROM from Joanna Sheen

So as you can see I've been a busy crafting bee, another blog coming right behind this one with the Christmas cards I've also made!

Sarah x

More Faery cards

I've been rather attached to my new 'Enchanted' CD ROM since my last post, I warned you I was smitten ;-) I've also dipped into an older CD that I have from My Craft Studio called 'Walk in wonderland'. It isn't as easy to use as the 'Enchanted' one from Card Creations Plus but there are some nice images on it that make up into pretty cards. Anyway here are my latest few makes:

Pumpkin Faery card from the 'Enchanted' CD ROM

A close up of the decoupage

A Christmas Fae from the 'Enchanted' CD ROM

Detail

A pyramage card from the 'Walk in Wonderland' CD ROM

Another from 'Walk in Wonderland'

Another friend of mine has commissioned me to make her a batch of open sentiment cards, these faery cards are part of that.

More soon hopefully!

Sarah x

Linda Ravenscroft faery cards

I have always loved fairies (or fae), ever since I was a little girl, and just as much now I'm an adult. There are some amazing faery artists out there: Brian Froud, Amy Brown, Jessica Galbreth and Linda Ravenscroft being amongst my favourites. Last week on Create and Craft TV they launched a new CD ROM of Linda Ravenscroft's art full of printable designs for card making, so of course I had to buy it!

Linda has a very distinct style of faery art and you can tell she is very influenced by the Art Nouveau movement (my most favourite style of art).

'Guelder Rose' decoupage card

I was delighted with the print quality of the images from this CD, previous discs I've had haven't delivered the sort of clarity of image I would expect. As soon as it arrived yesterday I got started and have made two cards...it takes a long time to hand cut all the detailed images out!

All the work in this card is in the cutting, other than that I have added some peel off border stickers, a touch of Glossy Accents to her eyes and lips and Stickles glitter glue on her wings and dress to finish it.

Sagittarius Zodiac Faery

It's my Mom's birthday next month and when I saw the lovely Zodiac designs on the CD ROM I couldn't resist making her a card with her birth sign on. This is one of the 3D (decoupage) toppers, smaller than the topper on the first card I made it leaves you more scope to decorate the background of the card.

The background paper is colour co-ordinated with the design and is part of a selection of items that you can print out that match each design. I matted and layered the hexagonal design on to gold mirri card, added some peel off borders and gems to embellish. 

I am smitten with this disc and will no doubt be posting more completed cards from it soon.

Sarah x

A set of note cards

An on-line friend of mine was looking at some photos of my cards recently and asked if I would create her a set of note cards using the Art Nouveau ladies stamps from Creative Expressions. She especially like the 'Dream' card I made a few weeks ago:

So with this in mind I used four different stamps from the two plates and made a total of eight note cards, two of each design.

I decided to make them A6 in size, as most note cards usually are and also to keep the costs down for shipment to the USA. 

The main images were stamped using Stazon ink in 'Stone Grey' onto watercolour paper, which has a slightly textured surface. 

I water coloured them using Distress inks and then accented them here and there with Perfect Pearls in Interference colours. A few jewels and a touch of Glossy Accents were also used on some of them. 

All the images were matted and layered onto purple holographic card and mounted onto purple base cards with embellishments of ribbons, flowers, jewels and sequins. 

I've sent my customer an email to show her the finished cards, hopefully she'll like them, if not then I could be selling them on Dream Aid or Esty ;-)

Sarah x

Spooktacular!

So this past couple of weeks I have been obsessed with the two new Halloween themed stamp plates from Elusive Images:

After gaining much inspiration from the Elusive Images Design Team blog and the free ideas sheet you get when you purchase the stamp plates I have made several different Halloween cards for some of my more spooky friends :-)

A trio of feline familiars

A close up of the cat & pumpkins panel.

 

A close up of the spooky house panel 

All the main images were stamped onto white card with black Archival ink and coloured with Distress inks in a watercolour style, accented here and there with Perfect Pearls and Stickles glitter. Most of the brightly coloured card is stamped with Versamark and highlighted with Interference Perfect Pearls in a toning shade.

I had so much fun making these and can't wait to send them out. Autumn is my favourite time of year and Halloween is a fun holiday, I just wished we made as much of it in the UK and they do across the pond in the USA.

Sarah x

Birthday card for my Husband

Yesterday was my husband's birthday and I made him quite a traditional looking card.

The birds were heat embossed using Elusive Images stamps and coloured with Distress Inks. I cut them out and mounted them on a plain matt on top of a patterned background. All the papers are from Anna Griffin. A simple 'Happy Birthday' greeting finished it off, husband likes the simpler style of card :-)

A close up of the embossed birds.

As a little extra something I also made him a grungeboard bookmark. Sized 6" by 2" you can get several of them from one piece of grungeboard, I think they make a nice small girft. I coloured this one with 'Bundled Sage' Distress ink, stamped a text/script image in 'Weathered Wood', then a Sanskrit  Proverb from Elusive Images in 'Broken China'. To finish I stamped a clock face from Crafty Individuals and a penny farthing bike from Tala Stamps, both in 'Peeled Paint'. 

 

Thank you for looking!

Sarah x

I have been crafting, honest!

Sorry I've been away so long, you know how it is, you have time to make things but no time to spend writing a blog and uploading photos. Well today I have been baking cupcakes for a small tea party I'm having for my friend's birthday tomorrow, so I have a spare half hour to upload my recent creations.

This is an invite I made for the aforementioned tea party. I haven't seen my friend for a while and I felt that we needed a girls only afternoon to catch up with each other, and a tea party seemed like a nice idea (I am obsessed with cake!).

The main image is from a stamp by Crafty Individuals which I stamped with Stayzon onto card that  I'd coloured with pearlised pink ink. The background is another Crafty Individuals stamp with a Tea Time theme: I stamped directly onto the cream base card with 'Antique Linen' Distress ink. It was finished off with two layers of ribbon, some gems and a cute flower shaped button.

For her birthday card I created another version of the 'Dream' card I made a few weeks ago. This time I made the background paper myself with two stamps from the same Creative Expressions 'Art Nouveau ladies' plate using Versamark ink and some Perfect Pearls in 'Interference Violet'. 

Another friend of mine looked at some photos of various craft projects I'd uploaded to my Facebook page and she asked me if I'd make her two cards the same as the 'Butterfly Blessings' card I'd made a while ago (see my slideshow folders to the right hand side of the page). I made one in exactly the same colours and this blue and green version too. I love these Elusive Images stamps so much, they always give such an artistic feel to anything you make with them. The background is stamped with Distress inks and the butterfly is coloured with pencils and a watercolour brush, with some Perfect Pearl accents.

Sarah xx

Green peacock birthday card and a touch of decoupage

Hello everyone, I hope you've all had a good weekend. It's a shame Sunday is almost over, back to work in the morning!

It's my Mother-In-Laws 65th birthday next week and of course I was commissioned to make her birthday card by my husband, he never has to bother choosing cards anymore now I make them all :-)  I know my Mother-In-Law is fonder of a more traditional style of card, and with this in mind I decided to make a decoupage from a Duflex kit of Art Nouveau images, all of which are from Alphonse Mucha paintings (he is my favourite artist, I adore his work). Here's the result:

I have to admit that it wasn't hard work to create, the images are all die cut, you just have to pop them out from the design sheet and trim them up a little to make them neater. They are a little fiddly though, some of the layers are really tiny. Here's an angled close up, so you can see the layers:

Also this weekend I decided to take part in two challenges. One was as part of the Graphicus Guild, with a very basic green theme and the other was at the Katzelkraft challenge blog 'Katzmania' following a design layout for a card. To make things easier I decided to roll both challenges into one card, using the Katzmania layout and the green Graphicus theme. Cheating? I'm not sure ;-) 

Here's the design template from Katzmania, I think I followed it closely enough:

The stamps are from Elusive Images, the peacock was cut out using my Cuttlebug. The feathered background was made by stamping Versamark ink on black card and then dusting Perfect Pearls over the top, it's quite pretty when it catches the light.

I'm going to use the card for a friends birthday later this month, I hope she likes green!

Sarah x